1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a video viewing support system and method for providing users with video content divided in units of topics, and enabling them to select topics they want to view, thereby realizing efficient viewing of the video content.
2. Description of the Related Art
At present, the audience can access various types of video content, such as TV programs, broadcast by, for example, terrestrial satellite or cable broadcasting, and also can access movies distributed by various media, such as DVDs. It is expected that the amount of viewable content will go on increasing in accordance with an increase in the number of channels and spread of cost-effective media. Therefore, it is possible that “selective viewing”, in which at first, the entire structure, e.g., table, of a single piece of video content is skimmed, and then only the interesting portion is selected and viewed, may become prevailing in place of a conventional fashion of viewing in which one piece of video content is viewed from the beginning to the end.
For instance, if two or three particular topics are selected from a two-hour information program containing unorganized topics, and viewed, the total required time is only several tens of minutes, and the remaining time can be used for viewing other programs or for matters other than video content viewing, with the result that an efficient lifestyle can be established.
To realize selective viewing of video content, a user interface may be provided for a viewer (see, for example, JP-A 2004-23799(KOKAI)). The user interface displays a key frame, i.e., a thumbnail image, in units of divided video content items, and displays information indicating the degree of interest of a user, together with each thumbnail image.
The above conventional interface can provide the user with a list of thumbnail images and keywords or key sentences corresponding to respective topics, thereby inducing them to perform selective viewing.
However, when such an interface as the above is actually used for selective viewing, information that the user does not want to have before actual viewing may well be provided for them, thereby spoiling the enjoyment of viewing.
For instance, a keyword for the answer to a quiz or an answer image may be provided for a user who tries to answer the quiz, a thumbnail image with the score of a sport may be provided for a user who is now viewing, it, or a punchline may be provided as a key sentence to a user who tries to view a comedy show.
If such failures often occur, users may well lose interest in the programs before viewing them. Namely, the object of selective viewing to enable the users to select an interesting portion of a program to thereby realize an efficient way of viewing may not be achieved.
As a technique for preventing the enjoyment of viewing of users from being spoiled, there is contrivance, in which mutual reference between a plurality of video content items is utilized to control the order of provision of the items so as to, for example, prevent the result of a sport that a user wants to view from being provided to them before they view the program of the sport (see, for example, JP-A 2004-118483(KOKAI)).
However, since this technique is based on a citation relationship in which a certain part of a content item is cited by another content item, it cannot be utilized for selective viewing based on topic division of a single program (content item). Further, in selective viewing, information that a user does not want to have beforehand may be provided to them. In contrast, in the other technique, only the order of provision of programs is controlled, therefore there is no means for, for example, concealing, from a topic list image, information that a user does not want to have beforehand.